If only more muslims were like Youssef M. Ibrahim (or Irshad Mani for that matter) those of us who live in the civilized world wouldn't feel as threatend by the "religion of peace"...
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050726-073844-6818r
Opinion: The Muslim mind is on fire
Youssef M. Ibrahim
July 26, 2005
DUBAI -- The world of Islam is on fire. Indeed, the Muslim mind is on fire. Above all, the West is now ready to take both of them on.
The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago. Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down.
Palestine is on fire, too, with Palestinian armed groups fighting one another - Hamas against Fatah and all against the Palestinian Authority. All have rendered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas impotent and have diminished the world's respect and sympathy for Palestinian sufferings.
A couple of weeks ago London was on fire as Pakistani and other Muslims with British citizenship blew up tube stations in the name of Islam. Al Qaeda in Europe or one of its franchises proclaimed proudly the killing of 54 and wounding 700 innocent citizens was done to "avenge Islam" and Muslims.
Madrid was on fire, too, last year, when Muslim jihadis blew up train stations killing 160 people and wounding a few thousands.
The excuse in all the above cases was the war in Iraq, but let us not forget that in September 2001, long before Iraq, Osama Bin Laden proudly announced that he ordered the killing of some 3,000 in the United States, in the name of avenging Islam. Let us not forget that the killing began a long time before the invasion of Iraq.
Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam. They killed innocent tourists and natives in Morocco and Egypt, in Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by Muslims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They killed in India, in Thailand and are now talking of killing in Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels.
Above all, it is the Muslim mind that is on fire.
The Muslim fundamentalist who attacked the Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands, stabbed him more than 23 times then cut his throat. He recently proudly proclaimed at his trial: "I did it because my religion - Islam - dictated it and I would do it again if were free." Which preacher told this guy this is Islam? That preacher should be in jail with him.
Do the cowardly jihadis who recruit suicide bombers really think that they will force the US Army and British troops out of Iraq by killing hundreds of innocent Iraqis? US troops now have bases and operate in Iraq but also from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman.
The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the great "Western Tiger". There was a time when the United States and Europe welcomed Arab and Muslim immigrants, visitors and students, with open arms. London even allowed all dissidents escaping their countries to preach against those countries under the guise of political refugees.
Well, that is all over now. Time has come for the big Western vengeance.
Visas for Arab and Muslim young men will be impossible to get for the United States and Western Europe. Those working there will be expelled if they are illegal, and harassed even if their papers are in order.
Airlines will have to right to refuse boarding to passengers if their names even resemble names on a prohibited list on all flights heading to Europe and the United States.
What is more important to remember is this: When the West did unite after World War II to beat communism, the long Cold War began without pity. They took no prisoners. They all stood together, from the United States to Norway, from Britain to Spain, from Belgium to Switzerland. And they did bring down the biggest empire. Communism collapsed.
I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.
Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times and energy editor of the Wall Street Journal, is managing director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group
The Muslim mind is on fire
Is it any wonder they hate us?
Just a Muslim mother tenderly taking care of her child.
What Do the Terrorists Want?
Appeasing twits like Steven insist that the bloodshed we experience at the hands of islamists is really our own fault. That Osama is no worse than the dudes in the IRA and that all we need to do to make them stop is leave Iraq and Afghanistan.
What Do the Terrorists Want?
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
July 26, 2005
What do Islamist terrorists want? The answer should be obvious, but it is not.
Most anti-Western terrorist attacks these days are perpetrated without demands being enunciated. Bombs go off, planes get hijacked and crashed into buildings, hotels collapse. The dead are counted. Detectives trace back the perpetrators' identities. Shadowy websites make post-hoc unauthenticated claims.
But the reasons for the violence go unexplained. Analysts, including myself, are left speculating about motives. These can relate to terrorists' personal grievances based in poverty, prejudice, or cultural alienation. Alternately, an intention to change international policy can be seen as a motive: pulling "a Madrid" and getting governments to withdraw their troops from Iraq; convincing Americans to leave Saudi Arabia; ending American support for Israel; pressuring New Delhi to cede control of all Kashmir.
Any of these motives could have contributed to the violence; as London's Daily Telegraph puts it, problems in Iraq and Afghanistan each added "a new pebble to the mountain of grievances that militant fanatics have erected." Yet neither is decisive to giving up one's life for the sake of killing others.
In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and Islamic law, the Shari'a. Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their "real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide ‘caliphate' founded on Shari'a law."
Terrorists openly declare this goal. The Islamists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 decorated their holding cages with banners proclaiming the "caliphate or death." A biography of one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of recent times and an influence on Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam declares that his life "revolved around a single goal, namely the establishment of Allah's Rule on earth" and restoring the caliphate.
Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that "the pious caliphate will start from Afghanistan." His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, "history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government." Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that has declared "Due to the blessings of jihad, America's countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon," to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.
Or, as Mohammed Bouyeri wrote in the note he attached to the corpse of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker he had just assassinated, "Islam will be victorious through the blood of martyrs who spread its light in every dark corner of this earth."
Interestingly, van Gogh's murderer was frustrated by the mistaken motives attributed to him, insisting at his trial: "I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted."
Although terrorists state their jihadi motives loudly and clearly, Westerners and Muslims alike too often fail to hear them. Islamic organizations, Canadian author Irshad Manji observes, pretend that "Islam is an innocent bystander in today's terrorism."
What the terrorists want is abundantly clear. It requires monumental denial not to acknowledge it, but we Westerners have risen to the challenge.
F**k allah and his pedophile prophet...
Life sentence for killer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh
Last Updated Tue, 26 Jul 2005 08:13:04 EDT
CBC News
A man in the Netherlands was sent to prison for life on Tuesday for killing controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
The court called the killing a terrorist act.
Mohammed Bouyeri, a 27-year-old Dutch citizen, received the harshest sentence possible.
"The murder of Theo van Gogh provoked a wave of revulsion and disdain in the Netherlands," Judge Udo Willem Bentinck said in Amsterdam.
"Theo van Gogh was mercilessly slaughtered," the judge said, adding that his killing caused "great fear and insecurity" in the Netherlands.
Bouyeri ambushed the filmmaker on an Amsterdam street in November 2004.
FROM NOV. 2, 2004: Controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh killed
He shot Van Gogh repeatedly, stabbed him, and slit his throat before thrusting a letter – the killer's manifesto – into his chest on the point of a knife.
Bouyeri showed no emotion as the verdict was read out and shook his lawyer's hand afterwards.
He'd earlier told the court he was following his religious beliefs.
"I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his prophet," he said.
He also said he intended to die in the attack on Van Gogh, to become a martyr for his faith.
Van Gogh, a distant relative of the artist Vincent van Gogh, was apparently targeted because of his 2004 short film Submission, which told fictional stories of Muslim women who were sexually and physically abused.
Some muslims admit what the problem is...
Muslims and violence
Monday July 25, 2005
The Guardian
For Muslim religious leaders to condemn the London bombings is commendable. But to support this by saying Islam is unequivocally a religion of peace is disingenuous (Comment, July 22). The prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him) himself, while at times preaching tolerance, also ordered the murder of all the men of a belligerent Jewish tribe and the enslavement of all its women and children, following the seizure of Medina - irrespective of whether they were combatants or not. In similar manner, many Muslim leaders justify the killing of Israeli civilians by Muslim suicide bombers and some also justify the terror on the tube because of the UK's role in the invasion of Iraq.
Over and above this all-pervasive contradictory attitude within Islam are Islamic laws which are even more straightforwardly barbaric on a host of topics, such as holding a women's testimony in a court of law to be worth less than a man's, or the mandatory death penalty for practising homosexuals and Muslims whose conscience tells them to leave Islam (apostates).
Some Muslims choose to turn a blind eye to the uncomfortable words that stare them in the face. But as people who (along with hundreds of others) narrowly escaped death on the underground, we strongly feel that this conspiracy of silence about the very real violence in religious texts needs to be broken.
Raza Griffiths
Shahzad Ahmed
"moderate" muslim threatens Canada
Imam warns Ottawa to back off Muslims
By COLIN FREEZE
Monday, July 25, 2005
A controversial Toronto imam warned Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan at a closed-door meeting to stop "terrorizing" Canadian Muslims.
"If you try to cross the line I can't guarantee what is going to happen. Our young people, we can't control," Aly Hindy, the head of Scarborough's Salaheddin Islamic Centre, recalls telling the minister at the May meeting she held in Toronto with dozens of Muslim leaders.
The meeting was part of an effort by Ms. McLellan to reach out to Canadian Muslims amid complaints that the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service are engaging in racial profiling.
The minister and her officials have been meeting community leaders to explain they are not targeting Muslims generally, only individuals with possible terrorist links.
By many accounts, the meetings have been positive and are contributing to a thaw in relations between Muslims and security agents, even if the exchange in May was a little heated.
Mr. Hindy, who has long complained that CSIS is spying on him, his family and his mosque, told Ms. McLellan that a young Muslim woman complained to him she was roughed up by Canadian spies while her husband was away at prayers. This allegation could spur reprisals because "our women are the most valuable thing to us" and "for a Muslim, honour is more important than his life," Mr. Hindy said in a recent interview.
"Our women" What kind of 12th century clod is this?
He made the point to the minister. Several people who attended shrugged off the imam's remarks, but some Muslims and government agents later approached Mr. Hindy asking him to explain himself.
"The police came to me and said, 'This is a kind of threat,' and I said yes," he said. "But it's for the good of this country.
"And they said, 'Do you know some of the names of those people you expect to cause some problems?' And I said, 'You just open the telephone directory.' "
Proving again my contention that every muslim is a threat to our society
While government investigators probing the woman's complaint told Mr. Hindy they have not found evidence of wrongdoing, he isn't giving the spy service the benefit of the doubt.
"We believe CSIS should stop terrorizing us," he says in a flyer he is circulating to mosques. "CSIS is powerless. CSIS has no authority over you. If CSIS agents come to your door, do not open [it] for them."
Toronto's Coalition of Muslim Organizations arranged the meeting, and said about 100 Muslim leaders attended. While COMO president Adam Esse noted that, "some people, when they talk, they get a little heated," he said the ministerial visit was "a sign of respect" and was worthwhile overall. "If you talk, you remove a lot of misconceptions, a lot of misunderstandings."
A spokesman for Ms. McLellan agreed. "We feel it was constructive, positive," Alex Swann said.
Even Mr. Hindy said that despite his differences with security agencies "the Deputy Prime Minister, she was very understanding."
In the wake of the London bombings, Ms. McLellan has said that Canadians must become "psychologically prepared" for such an attack.
It looks like we know where it is going to come from...
Tiny minority are evil? Not according to this...
Poll shows support for bombers.
A new poll says about a quarter of British Muslims sympathise with the motives of the London bombers, if not their methods.
And the survey in London’s Daily Telegraph shows one-third of British Muslims believe Western society is immoral.
The poll asked Muslims if they felt the July the 7th suicide attacks in which 56 peopled died were justified, and six per cent said they were.
71 per cent said they weren’t justified at all, and 11 per cent said they weren’t justified on balance.
But asked whether they had sympathy with the feelings and motives of the four British Muslim bombers, 13 per cent said they had a lot of sympathy and another 11 per cent had a little.
A similar poll for The Sun newspaper showed 91 per cent of the Muslim respondents didn’t feel the suicide bombings were justified by the Islamic holy book, the Koran.
An apologist for brutality tries to justify the evil of islam...
What's always amusing to me, are the islamists one finds online who really don't think their religion is cruel, oppressive or violent - even as they tell you how cruel oppressive and violent it is. This from a "moderate" muslim called "Jon":
Flanstein,
First off, you’re absolutely wrong if you think that all Muslims are Jew-haters. In fact Jews are by far more devoted to discriminating and demonstrating against Islam. In the Qur’an itself, Jews Christians and Muslims are all “Religions of the Book”. Jews denied the Mesiah himself and caused him to be crusified (according to Christian belief) and now pretend to be Christians’ best friend. They call Muslims biased Jew-haters and have the nerves to call themselves the chosen ones. Now who’s biased? Muslims invite Jews and Christians to learn and maybe join Islam. Muslims do not have anything againt Judaism, it is the liars who pretend to believe in Judaism who are causing all the hatred. Muslims had no problem with sharing the holy land of Palestine/Israel (whatever you wanna call it), and untill today there are many Jews in Iran (the big bad wolf of Islam) who are not deprived of their rights like Muslims under the oppression of Jews.
Dont act like you dont know the facts, we know that you know that we know that you know the truth.
yessirree, those muslims sure have a history of being nice to the Jews (the blog this post comes from, Jews were often referred to as "filthy Kikes".) And then there are these:
Allah stamped wretchedness upon the Jews because they killed the prophets and disbelieved Allah's revelations. 2:61
Jews are the greediest of all humankind. 2:96
Don't believe anyone who is not a Muslim. 3:73
Don't be friends with non-Muslims. They all hate you and want to ruin you. 3:118
Those (Christians and Jews) are they whom Allah hath cursed." 4:52
Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them. 4:89
Allah has cursed the Jews and hardened their hearts. Nearly all of them are treacherous. 5:12-13
Is it any wonder that muslims hate non-muslims when their "holy book" tells them to?
Second of all, if you think that women are mistreated in Islam, then you are one hell-of-an-idiot. Women are free to persue their personal goals, watched over like babies and respected lke queens. How often do you hear of a Muslim rapist
huh?
You’re gonna say that the western female has more rights than the Muslim female, because she can walk around in a bikini 24/7… Muslim women refuse to do so ’cause they will not allow themselves to be seen as a sex object like the western whore, and you think that’s because she’s not free. I wish I had your daughter’s phone number, cause if she’s a free girl according to how you see it, I’ma Lovit. How often do u see a homeless Muslim woman that sleeps in a crack shelter? When was the last time you saw a muslim porn? Exactly. Despite all the poverty and circumstances in middle eastern countries, most of them were never even forced to get a job. In western “civilization”, she’d be staying at a halfway home at the age of 16, pregnant, with green hair, smoking pot, and has a yiest infection. Eighhhhh. FYI Islam was the first religion to force heritage to female descendants.
How patently strange that you people think a western woman exercising her right to choose is somehow oppressed and a muslim woman under a backwards dress code is free--very odd... The Muslim world casts all Western women as whores and our way of life as "immoral" while lusting after the very same and more in their Paradise. I would say promoting misery and ignorance in this life while wishing for 72 virgins and all the trimmings in the next is the height of immorality as well as hypocrisy.
I lived in Beirut, Lebanon, borj-al-barajne, in the heart of Hizbollah and Harakit Amal, 8 years and I’m 21 (1994-2002), and I swear by God that every person I ever talked to that was with Huzbullah (militarilly or academically), had a face that would light up a room. Hizzbollah is also an organization that funds education for orphans and children with disabled parents, they have financial aid programs for those who have not enough money to visit Mecca, they feed thousands of fasting orphans in Ramadan, they shelter thousands and I mean thousands of orphans and widows so they’re not homeless. Why don’t you mention that on FOX news you biased son of a civilized whore. Why doesn’t a single American I’ve talked to know about May 1996 when Israelis bombed the U.N. safe zone in southern Lebanon and killed hundreds of unarmed women and children. Or even the Sabra and Shatila slaughter of hundreds of unarmed muslims in their homes. What about the thousands of muslim victims of the Srebrenica Massacre in the UN safe zone and the rape and torture of the women. You call Muslims terrorists. Those incidents alone are a thousand times more brutal than flying a plane into a building, let alone it being the financial and military headquarters of terrorists all over the globe. How dare you speak as if the TRUTH revolves around your side of the argument…
I think I've got a picture of one of those nice dudes in hizzbollah further down this page. How you can descibe child-murdering, grannie-butchering sacks of islamic crap as good guys, is beyond the pale. As Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, a Saudi journalist in London said: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists,” he writes, “but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. … We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women."
Irshad manji wants to reform islam - that's why she's under a constant death threat...
From The Times Online:
No wonder Irshad Manji has received death threats since appearing on British television: she is a lipstick lesbian, a Muslim and scourge of Islamic leaders, whom she accuses of making excuses about the terror attacks on London. Oh, and she tells ordinary Muslims to “crawl out of their narcissistic shell”. Ouch.
Manji is a glamorous Canadian television presenter whose book, The Trouble with Islam, has made her so famous in America that she won something called the Oprah Winfrey Chutzpah award. Even at a conference in Oxford last week she felt unsafe — despite extra security — with police sifting through “disgusting e-mails” and threats after her appearance on Newsnight.
Doesn’t the violent Muslim minority show Islam is flawed? “I ask myself the same question,” she grimaces. Far from regarding Muslims as oppressed they have a “supremacy complex — and that’s dangerous”. This, she contends, is true even among moderates. “Literalists” who consider the Koran the “perfect manifesto of God” have taken over the mainstream; and far from misreading Islam, as Tony Blair and the Muslim Council of Britain insist, terrorists can find encouragement for murder in the Koran.
The underlying problem with Islam, observes Manji, is that far from spiritualising Arabia, it has been infected with the reactionary prejudices of the Middle East: “Colonialism is not the preserve of people with pink skin. What about Islamic imperialism? Eighty per cent of Muslims live outside the Arab world yet all Muslims must bow to Mecca.” Fresh thinking, she contends, is suppressed by ignorant imams; you can see why she has been dubbed “Osama’s worst nightmare ”.
“The good news,” she insists, “is it doesn’t have to be like this.” She wants a reformation in Islam, returning it to its clever, fun-loving roots. “The world’s first ‘feminist’ was an 11th-century Muslim man. Baghdad had one of the first universities in the 9th century; the Spanish ‘Ole!’ comes from ‘Allah’; Islam even gave us the guitar.”
But now it gives us the suicide bomber: why? She does not rule out alienation and all those Muslims-as-victims explanations, but thinks the Muslim Council of Britain is negligent for “not even acknowledging religion might also have played a role”. Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, said terrorists could not be Muslims but Manji hits back: “The jury is out on what Islam is.”
A religion of peace vs. apologists for terrorism
The mainstream media are finally beggining to get it...
Most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims. The war on terror will never end unless moderate Muslims all over the world confront it
Harvey Enchin
Vancouver Sun
July 15, 2005
Hours after the terror attacks on the London subway and a bus last week, the Canadian Islamic Congress issued a brief statement that condemned the bombing.
It offered no condolences, expressed no grief, displayed no shock; it was instead a directive to the public not to blame Islam.
"We hope Canadian Muslims are not found guilty by association," said its national president, Mohamed Elmasry.
Criticism forced him to subsequently toss in some disingenuous sympathy, but he'd shown his true colours. That Elmasry should be speaking as the head of any Islamic organization is an affront to what its followers call a religion of peace.
Last year, he suggested all Israelis over the age of 18 should be murdered, arguing that because Israel has a civilian army they are legitimate targets for Palestinian suicide bombers. There were calls for his resignation, which Muslim leaders refused. Later, on a CBC radio program, he defended Islamic terrorism, saying the colonial powers committed worse atrocities and deserved what they got.
Earlier this year, Elmasry defended the Syrian occupation of Lebanon as a peacekeeping mission and described Iraq under Saddam Hussein as some sort of paradise with full employment, a stable public service infrastructure, and one of the leading Middle East states in administration, education and health care before the intervention of the international coalition plunged it into chaos.
No mention of the gassing of the Kurds, the torture chambers and rape rooms, the attack on Kuwait, war with Iran or the Scud missiles fired at Israel.
As long as apologists for terrorism like Elmasry are allowed to be spokesmen for Islam, all Muslims are vulnerable to being found guilty by association.
This need not be the case. Zijad Delich, the imam at the Jami'a Mosque in Richmond, sounded the right note last week, urging that the "criminals" who carried out the London terror attack be brought to justice. Similar sentiments were heard from the Canadian Council on American-Islamic relations and several Muslim groups in Britain.
Unfortunately, many of the condemnations of the bombing were perfunctory and fell far short of a call to arms in the war on terrorism.
Shortly after the bombing, Internet chat rooms run by British Muslims were flooded with congratulatory messages, hailing their victory over the infidels. The Christian Science Monitor reported a Muslim watchmaker in northeast London saying, "We don't need to fight. We are taking over. England does not belong to the English people, it belongs to God."
In a seemingly unrelated event, The Jordan Times reported that last week's International Islamic Conference had issued statements limiting who can issue fatwas and forbidding the declaration of any Muslim as an apostate, representing a landmark in Muslim history "even as the West is running an anti-Muslim campaign that was nurtured by Israel during the 1990s . . . ."
While the statement is welcome, given that terror groups use the term "apostate" to stigmatize other moderate Muslims and set them up for murder, the official state-run Jordanian newspaper added a ludicrous libel, unable to contain its hatred for the West in general and Israel in particular.
The widespread delusion that the West, under the influence of Jews, is somehow responsible for the Islamic world's decline and decay is reinforced daily in the news media, music videos, television programs and school textbooks throughout the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Sermons from mosques around the world preach to the faithful that Islam is the one and only true religion, that Allah will eventually humiliate the Jews and "crusaders" and make them subservient to the followers of Mohammed, as they were during Islamic rule in southern Europe from the 8th to the 11th century.
They are taught that Islam is not only a religion but a universal ideology, a complete legal system and an infallible guide that will provide solutions to all problems of human life. In this theology, there is no pluralism, no accommodation, no mercy for the infidels.
The war on terror will never end unless moderate Muslims all over the world confront it.
British intelligence estimates that 3,000 British Muslims have passed through al-Qaida training camps out of a total Muslim population in England of two million. That's a high ratio of potential killers. Their sympathies must be well-known to their families, friends and leaders of the mosques they attend, where they are more than likely fed a steady diet of Saudi-style Wahhabism, a cult that asserts all other religions are false and exhorts its adherents to kill non-believers as their religious duty.
What is obvious is that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Iraq, where the U.S. and its allies ousted a repressive regime and have invested billions of dollars to rebuild the country while putting their citizens' lives at risk to establish democracy.
Nor has it anything to with the Palestinians to whom the G-8 leaders have committed another $3 billion US to help establish an independent state even though the Palestinian Authority has done nothing to dismantle its vast terrorist network as it is obliged to do under the "road map."
Neither can Islamic terrorism be linked to the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where the U.S. liberated a people from tyranny, giving them the right for the first time to choose their government; or to the West's encouragement of the fledgling human rights movement in the Muslim world, where the concept has been unknown.
No, the terrorists despise the West because it is there, because its principles of religious freedom, democracy and equality are anathema to them.
So moderate Muslim leaders have to do more than grudgingly concede that blowing up innocent people on a subway train is bad. They have to rout out the evil in their midst.
Imams who preach hatred should be fired. Islamic schools that teach Jews are descendants of apes and pigs should be shut down. Videos, films and TV shows that extol the virtues of martyrdom should be banned.
They must tell Muslims that terrorism has no justification and that al-Qaida and its offshoots are criminal, not Islamic, organizations. So too they must acknowledge are Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade -- killers and criminals all, whether they attack a transit system in London, bomb a nightclub in Bali, destroy a train in Madrid, crash planes in New York or set off explosives in a crowded restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslims. There is no place in civil society for an ideology that celebrates mass murder or deems suicide bombing a sacred act.
Moderate Muslim leaders must take aggressive steps to ensure that Islam proves to be what they keep telling everybody it is -- a religion of tolerance and peace.
Mohammad the paedophile in his harem. The dude responsible for the deaths of millions. I don't believe in god, but if satan exists, this is what he looks like... 
Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid -- I pray for it
Vito Pilieci
The Ottawa Citizen; with files from The Associated Press
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=8c143bda-7b3e-4ef5-860d-4098be46f63d
July 13, 2005
Muslim extremists living in London warned that violence was coming more than a year before four bombs were detonated in the city's core last week.
In an article that ran in the Evening Standard, a London newspaper, on April 20, 2004, reporter David Cohen sat with a group of Muslim youths in a coffee shop located in a suburb of the English capital and asked them whether it was possible for terrorists to strike London.
"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," Abdul Haq, a social worker, told Mr. Cohen. "I know it's going to happen because Sheik (Osama) bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid -- I pray for it, I look forward to the day."
At that point, another one of the youths sitting at the table with Mr. Cohen spoke up. "I agree with you, brother," said Abu Yusuf, a financial adviser. "I would like to see the mujahedeen coming into London and killing thousands, whether with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they need a safehouse, they can stay in mine."
During the interview, the five young men showed off varied anti-American propaganda they carried with them. One of them had a still photograph of a blown up American Humvee as the background image on his cellular phone.
"That's nothing," interjected Mr. Yusuf. "I downloaded the picture of the four burnt Americans hanging from the bridge."
The men Mr. Cohen spoke with are members of al-Muhajiroun, a fanatical organization of extremists in Britain who support Mr. bin Laden and other terrorist groups. The organization has been open about its wishes that Britain become an Islamic state.
"I don't believe in democracy. It's man-made. You're talking about a government that taxes people to death. It oppresses many millions of people in the world," he said. "It wouldn't be such a shame to have them overturned."
The group has been vocal in the past. In a May 2004 demonstration, in response to reports that British soldiers may have been involved in abusing Iraqi prisoners, a pack of members marched through the streets of London chanting, "bomb London, bomb New York" and "we are terrorists."
Al-Muhajiroun is led by an exiled Saudi, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, from a base in north London. Mr. Mohammed has warned in the past that several terrorist groups have been plotting to strike London.
According to Mr. Cohen's article from last April, security forces in Britain have had a hard time taking al-Muhajiroun seriously, "believing that a British-based group so brazenly 'out there' could not be involved in something as 'underground' as terrorism."
Even members of London's Islamic community didn't know what to think of the group one year ago.
Muhammed Sulaiman, president of the Islamic Cultural Society in the London suburb of Luton, told Mr. Cohen that al-Muhajiroun's ramblings are nothing more than "verbal diarrhea."
"They use Islam as a vehicle to promote their distorted beliefs, particularly to unemployed youngbloods who are vulnerable," Mr. Sulaiman is quoted as saying in the article.
The members of al-Muhajiroun that Mr. Cohen spoke with call the London suburb of Luton home. The suburb boasts the highest density of Muslims in Britain's southeast: more than 28,000 people out of the total population of 140,000 are followers of Islam.
One of the youths who spoke to Mr. Cohen last April, a 24-year-old welfare recipient named Ishtiaq Alamgir, who preferred to go by his adopted name of Sayful Islam, which means sword of Islam, wore a black jacket to the interview with the word "Jihad" tailored across it. Jihad means holy war in English.
Mr. Islam claimed to be the leader of the Luton branch of al-Muhajiroun. He said he joined the organization to follow the true meanings of Islam.
"I made a decision that I wanted to follow what Islam really said," he told Mr. Cohen. "I went to listen to all the local imams, but I found their portrayal of Islam was too secularized. When I heard Sheik Omar (the leader) of al-Muhajiroun speak, it was pure Islam."
Mr. Islam and his group hardly fit the stereotype of a terrorist. None of them had been educated or raised in impoverished or war-struck nations. Of the five he spoke with for the article, three had been born in Britain and the other two had immigrated to the country when they were very young.
All five had been raised in schools around Luton, and they were all members of middle-class families.
Mr. Islam was an accountant before he decided to quit his job and become a political extremist determined to bring about "Khilafah, the worldwide domination of Islam," adding that "Islam is not like Christianity where they turn the other cheek ... Islam allows us to retaliate." He also said he supports Mr. bin Laden "100 per cent."
"When a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my own children," Mr. Islam told Mr. Cohen.
He also praised the events of Sept. 11, 2001 as an event that struck a great blow against the enemies of organizations such as al-Muhajiroun.
"That magnificent action split the world into two camps: you were either with Islam and al-Qaeda or with the enemy," he told Mr. Cohen.
When Mr. Cohen asked the group how far it would go to support al-Muhajiroun's agenda to destroy "the enemy," another at the table spoke up.
"You want to know how far I will go," Abu Musa, a security guard, told Mr. Cohen. "When Allah said in the Koran 'kill and be killed' that's what I want. I want a martyr operation, where I kill my enemy."
The statements made by the members of al-Muharjiroun just more than a year ago were particularly chilling given yesterday's revelation that the four men involved in last week's bombing were all British-born.
Six months ago, al-Muhajiroun leader Mr. Mohammed declared war Britain, using the Internet to rally his followers in the country. The Times Online reported yesterday that in an online conversation with his followers in January, Mr. Mohammed said, "The whole of Britain has become Dar ul-Harb (land of war)."
In a similar conversation with his British followers in 1986, Mr. Mohammed said, "Al-Qaeda and all its branches of the world, that is the victorious group ... You are obliged to join," according to the Times.
Islam - The Face of evil!
Van Gogh Killer to Mother: 'I Don't Feel Your Pain'
The face of evil...
Mohammed Bouyeri, the suspect in the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, confessed to the murder in a Dutch courtroom today in a vile outburst which included confronting van Gogh's mother.
The 27-year-old told the court he killed van Gogh and felt no regret. 'I did it out of conviction,' Bouyeri said. 'If I ever get free, I would do it again.'
He later turned to van Gogh's mother, Anneke, who was in the courtroom and bluntly told her, 'I don't feel your pain.'
Bouyeri did not mount a defense in the case. The prosecution rested on Monday. They demanded the maximum sentence of life in prison against Bouyeri because the crime was intended to shock the country.
Van Gogh's killer left a rambling five-page note attached to the filmmaker's corpse with a knife. The note contained religious rants and threatened additional attacks.
Dutch authorities say Bouyeri is a member of a terrorist cell known as the Hofstad Network. He has also been tied to a radical Syrian spiritual leader, Redouan al-Issar. Al-Issar disappeared shortly before van Gogh was murdered.
Theo van Gogh was a vocal critic of radical Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. His 2004 short film, 'Submission,' highlighted what van Gogh called the sexual and physical abuse of women in traditional Muslim societies.
The formal verdict in the case is expected on July 26.
Moderate muslims have had enough!
Moderate muslims from all over Britain have arranged a march of peace to oppose radical islam - a forum where they will publicly stand up to the radicals. Hundreds of thousands of peaceful muslims are expected to stand up to their violent co-religionists. Sympathy marches of concerned muslims have been organized in NYC, Cairo, Damascus, Paris and elsewhere. Muslims all over the United States and Canada are determined that their "peaceful religion" be returned to them and that militants stand down....
A boy's allowed to fantasize - isn't he?
The War Within The West
Originally posted by someone known as Melanie and then posted at the The Infidel Army
(Melanie) -- As I predicted yesterday, a number of commentators have rushed to blame Tony Blair and President Bush for causing yesterday’s carnage in London by having the effrontery to defend their countries against the war declared upon the west. Not that they see it that way, of course — the west’s defence is deemed to be aggression and the Islamist jihad merely an act of self-defence. Thus the ageing revolutionary Tariq Ali writes in the Guardian:
‘The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Just because these three wars are reported sporadically and mean little to the everyday lives of most Europeans does not mean the anger and bitterness they arouse in the Muslim world and its diaspora is insignificant. As long as western politicians wage their wars and their colleagues in the Muslim world watch in silence, young people will be attracted to the groups who carry out random acts of revenge. At the beginning of the G8, Blair suggested that "poverty was the cause of terrorism". It is not so. The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognised, the horrors will continue.’
No point telling Tariq Ali or the Guardian’s comment page editor that Iraq, Afghanistan and the West Bank and Gaza were only ‘occupied’ as a defensive move because they were all being used as the front line of attack against the west. For such people, America and the west cannot ever do self-defence because by definition they are colonialist oppressors and therefore their very existence is an act of aggression.
More generally, it is specifically Iraq that is presented as terrorist year zero. The Islamic world was all sweetness and light, it appears, until the Iraq war acted as a recruiting sergeant for al Qaeda. Thus James Reynolds, currently the BBC’s World Affairs correspondent and soon to head the BBC’s bureau in Israel (where he will no doubt continue to shine as an exemplar of the Robert Fisk school of objective journalism) writes of Tony Blair:
‘He is committed to staying in Iraq and to the hope that, in due course, the insurgency there can be overcome and Iraq will develop into a functioning, democratic state backed by its oil riches. Britain therefore remains in the front line, and the option of withdrawing from Iraq and minimising the risk of further attacks is not presently open to British voters. They have taken their decision and must accept the consequences’ (my italics).
Note in particular the pronoun ‘they’. For Reynolds here goes even further than blaming Bush and Blair for creating terror. It’s apparently all the fault of the British people for voting Blair back into power – for which they must ‘accept the consequences’ of being blown to bits on public transport! What an extraordinarily malevolent thing for anyone to write, let alone someone being paid to do so from the pockets of the very people he is so venomously blaming for their own destruction.
The reason why blaming al Qaeda’s terror on the war in Iraq is morally so obtuse goes deeper than the astonishing historical amnesia displayed by those who appear to airbrush from their memory the declaration of war upon the west and associated acts of terror over more than a decade culminating in 9/11. It is because it takes an element of truth and then draws from it a perverse and amoral conclusion. The element of truth is that the west’s actions in Afghanistan and Iraq undoubtedly have exacerbated jihadi fervour and drawn more into the cause. The amoral conclusion is that therefore these actions by the west were wrong.
The truth is that, for countries that believed Afghanistan and Iraq had already inflicted aggressive acts of violence upon the west and were poised to inflict even worse, there was no reasonable or principled alternative but to wage war upon them. The fact that any attempt by the west at self-defence would enrage yet more Islamists was merely the other prong of Morton’s Fork, and illustrated the dilemma posed by all terrorism – if its victims defend themselves, this recruits more to the terrorist cause, but if its victims don’t defend themselves this encourages the terrorists to redouble their attacks because their whole strategy is to demoralise their victims in every way in order to finish them off altogether. This is, after all, the terrible dilemma faced all the time by Israel – a choice between, on the one hand, protecting its citizens from genocidal attack by means which inflame the Arabs in the territories simply because they perceive any self defence by the Israelis as aggression thanks to the warped ideology with which they have been brainwashed, and on the other hand, appeasing terror by a variety of means which are all taken as a sign of weakness and which act therefore as a spur to redouble the terrorist war.
Faced with this intrinsic dilemma posed by terrorism, in which both courses of action have a downside, the only moral choice is to fight terror by the most vigorous means of self-defence possible. This is because while in the short to medium term this may recruit more to the terrorist cause, the alternative route of appeasement is to commit cultural or national suicide. In other words, for free peoples there is no alternative. That is why blaming the continuing war by al Qaeda on the west’s actions in Iraq is such a degraded and disgusting position to take.
Posted by melanie at July 8, 2005
And this is why they did it
Some very clear thinking by Times columnist Amir Taheri:
There is no way to reason with the terrorists, but the thinking behind their actions is perfectly clear
THE FIRST QUESTION that comes to mind is: what took them so long? The answer may be that in the past four years the British authorities have succeeded in preventing attacks on a number of occasions. David Blunkett, who was then Home Secretary, was often mocked for suggesting that this was the case.
It may take some time before the full identity of the attackers is established. But the ideology that motivates them, the networks that sustain them and the groups that finance them are all too well known.
Moments after yesterday’s attacks my telephone was buzzing with requests for interviews with one recurring question: but what do they want? That reminded me of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker, who was shot by an Islamist assassin on his way to work in Amsterdam last November. According to witnesses, Van Gogh begged for mercy and tried to reason with his assailant. “Surely we can discuss this,” he kept saying as the shots kept coming. “Let us talk it over.”
Van Gogh, who had angered Islamists with his documentary about the mistreatment of women in Islam, was reacting like BBC reporters did yesterday, assuming that the man who was killing him may have some reasonable demands which could be discussed in a calm, democratic atmosphere.
But sorry, old chaps, you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you.
The ideological soil in which alQaeda, and the many groups using its brand name, grow was described by one of its original masterminds, the Pakistani Abul-Ala al-Maudoodi more than 40 years ago. It goes something like this: when God created mankind He made all their bodily needs and movements subject to inescapable biological rules but decided to leave their spiritual, social and political needs and movements largely subject to their will. Soon, however, it became clear that Man cannot run his affairs the way God wants. So God started sending prophets to warn man and try to goad him on to the right path. A total of 128,000 prophets were sent, including Moses and Jesus. They all failed. Finally, God sent Muhammad as the last of His prophets and the bearer of His ultimate message, Islam. With the advent of Islam all previous religions were “abrogated” (mansukh), and their followers regarded as “infidel” (kuffar). The aim of all good Muslims, therefore, is to convert humanity to Islam, which regulates Man’s spiritual, economic, political and social moves to the last detail.
But what if non-Muslims refuse to take the right path? Here answers diverge. Some believe that the answer is dialogue and argument until followers of the “abrogated faiths” recognise their error and agree to be saved by converting to Islam. This is the view of most of the imams preaching in the mosques in the West. But others, including Osama bin Laden, a disciple of al-Maudoodi, believe that the Western-dominated world is too mired in corruption to hear any argument, and must be shocked into conversion through spectacular ghazavat (raids) of the kind we saw in New York and Washington in 2001, in Madrid last year, and now in London.
That yesterday’s attack was intended as a ghazava was confirmed in a statement by the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe, an Islamist group that claimed responsibility for yesterday’s atrocity. It said “We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid (ghazava) in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.” Those who carry out these missions are the ghazis, the highest of all Islamic distinctions just below that of the shahid or martyr. A ghazi who also becomes a shahid will be doubly meritorious.
There are many Muslims who believe that the idea that all other faiths have been “abrogated” and that the whole of mankind should be united under the banner of Islam must be dropped as a dangerous anachronism. But to the Islamist those Muslims who think like that are themselves regarded as lapsed, and deserving of death.
It is, of course, possible, as many in the West love to do, to ignore the strategic goal of the Islamists altogether and focus only on their tactical goals. These goals are well known and include driving the “Cross-worshippers” (Christian powers) out of the Muslim world, wiping Israel off the map of the Middle East, and replacing the governments of all Muslim countries with truly Islamic regimes like the one created by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and by the Taleban in Afghanistan.
How to achieve those objectives has been the subject of much debate in Islamist circles throughout the world, including in London, since 9/11. Bin Laden has consistently argued in favour of further ghazavat inside the West. He firmly believes that the West is too cowardly to fight back and, if terrorised in a big way, will do “what it must do”. That view was strengthened last year when al-Qaeda changed the Spanish Government with its deadly attack in Madrid. At the time bin Laden used his “Madrid victory” to call on other European countries to distance themselves from the United States or face similar “punishment”.
Bin Laden’s view has been challenged by his supposed No 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who insists that the Islamists should first win the war inside several vulnerable Muslim countries, notably Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Until yesterday it seemed that al-Zawahiri was winning the argument, especially by heating things up in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yesterday, the bin Laden doctrine struck back in London.
The author is an Iranian commentator on Middle Eastern affairs.
British Islamists Threatened Violence
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 8, 2005
Terrorism usually comes like a bolt from the blue, but not so the four explosions yesterday in London, killing at least 37. Some British Islamist leaders have been warning for months that such violence was imminent.
An Islamist British group called Al-Muhajiroun (Arabic: “the immigrants”) for some time publicly stated that the United Kingdom was immune from Islamist violence because of its acceptable behavior. In an April 2004 conversation, the 24-year-old head of Al-Muhajiroun’s Luton branch, Sayful Islam, announced that he supports Osama Bin Laden “100 percent” in the quest to achieve “the worldwide domination of Islam.”
Toward this end, Sayful Islam endorsed terrorism in Great Britain. “When a bomb attack happens here, I won’t be against it, even if it kills my own children. … But it is against Islam for me to engage personally in acts of terrorism in the UK because I live here. According to Islam, I have a covenant of security with the UK, as long as they allow us Muslims to live here in peace.” He further explained. “If we want to engage in terrorism, we would have to leave the country. It is against Islam to do otherwise.”
Covenant of security? What is that? In an August 2004 story in the New Statesman, “Why terrorists love Britain,” Jamie Campbell cited Mohamed Sifaoui, author of Inside Al Qaeda, that it has long been recognised by the British Islamists, by the British government and by UK intelligence agencies, that as long as Britain guarantees a degree of freedom to the likes of Hassan Butt [an overtly pro-terrorist Islamist], the terrorist strikes will continue to be planned within the borders of the UK but will not occur here.
Campbell draws from this the perversely ironic conclusion that “the presence of vocal and active Islamist terrorist sympathisers in the UK actually makes British people safer, while the full brunt of British-based terrorist plotting is suffered by people in other countries.”
Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian immigrant to the UK who headed Al-Muhajiroun, then confirmed the covenant of security, telling about companions of the Prophet Muhammad given protection by the king of Ethiopia. That experience, he told Campbell, led to the Koranic notion of covenant of security: Muslims may not attack the inhabitants of a country where they live in safety. This “makes it unlikely that British-based Muslims will carry out operations in the UK itself.”
But in January 2005, Omar Bakri Mohammed determined that the covenant of security had ended for British Muslims because of post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation that meant “the whole of Britain has become Dar ul-Harb [the Abode of War, the territory open for Muslim conquest].” Therefore, “the kuffar [unbelievers] has no sanctity for their own life or property.”
The country had gone from safe haven to enemy camp. To renew the covenant of security would require British authorities to undo that legislation and release those detained without trial. If they fail to do so, British Muslims must “join the global Islamic camp against the global crusade camp.”
Omar Bakri Mohammed went on overtly to threaten the British people: “The response from the Muslims will be horrendous if the British government continues in the way it treats Muslims,” explicitly raising the possibility of suicide bombings under the leadership of Al-Qaeda. Western governments must know that if they do not change course, Muslims will “give them a 9/11 day after day after day!”
When Sean O’Neil and Yaakov Lappin of the London Times asked Omar Bakri Mohammed about his statements on the covenant, Bakri said his definition of Britain as Dar ul-Harb was “theoretical” and he provided a non-bellicose re-interpretation:
It means that Muslims can no longer be considered to have sanctity and security here, therefore they should consider leaving this country and going back to their homelands. Otherwise they are under siege and obviously we do not want to see that we are living under siege.
In a less-guarded moment, however, Omar Bakri Mohammed acknowledged that for him, “the life of an unbeliever has no value.”
Yesterday’s explosions mark the end of the “covenant of security.” Let’s hope they also mark the end of an era of innocence, and that British authorities now begin to preempt terrorism rather than wait to become its victims.
American muslim longs to kill Jews and his fellow Americans
This post was taken from an American muslims blog: http://angryiranian.blogspot.com/
This was written by a guy named Lawrence Reza Ershaghi. Let's hope the CIA reads it too...
Shahadat
For an American the highest state one can attain is to get a Phd. However, for a Muslim it differs. The highest state we can attain is shahadat (marytrdom). The concept, often misunderstood, is the most sublime of actions. Every Ashura when the story of Imam Hussein is re-told, we mourn and lament the fact that we were not present to help him in fighting the accursed Yazid. The story of Karbala and Imam Hussein is the most humbling story and the greatest inspiration for those who aspire to be shaheeds. What can be said about a man like Imam Hussein who the night before the battle told all those in his camp that they only wanted his life and everyone else was free to go. Imam Hussein told them whoever wanted to leave now could and asked the candles to be put out as not to embarass anyone who deserted. Yet, when the candles were re-lit noone had left. One of Imam Hussein's companions replied if they were killed 70 times and made alive again they will still prefer to achieve martrydom with him than live amongst a tyrant like Yazid. How can anyone not be humbled by this? Imagine being Imam Hussein and watching your entire family slaughtered before your very eyes before you yourself are killed.
1300 years later this same story is what moved the Iranian volunteers in the imposed war by the criminal Saddam. It is no wonder the Iranians liekened Saddam to Yazid and chanted Marg bar Saddam e Yazed e Kaffar (death to the Yazidi infidel Saddam). The spirit of Ashura was always present in the battlefield and many of the soldiers had the anticipation of arriving in Karbala after the liberation of Khoramshahr. Whenever I watch old clips of the war I am moved. I am humbled. Tears are always present. But at same time I am in an excited state. Those clips serve as source of inspiration to me. It's kind of selfish, but a few years ago when the drums of war were being beaten and much talk was made about America going to war with Iran, I saw this as my chance to finally be a shaheed. I was like this is it. The one chance I may truly have at attaining the sublime state and what greater enemy to have to fight then the Great Satan, America herself. I would have dreams at night about being in Jebheh (frontlines) with the soldiers. Many people may think im twisted for desiring such a thing. But such people will never understand the mindset of a shaheed. Such people will never understand the statements of mothers during the Iran-Saddam war who had 4 sons martyred and asked Allah to grant her another one so that he can become a martyr as well.
I personally don't think I am prepared or worthy enough even of being a shaheed, but nevertheless the desire continues to persist however unworthy and spiritually unready I may be. Nor do I believe the oppurtunity has ceased either. The greatest of all battles for any Muslim will be the march to liberate Al-Quds and subsequently pray in congregation at the Al-Aqsa. What a glorious feeling it would be indeed to destroy the bloodsucking zionist regime.
So, what do we do about Islam?
It's clear to anyone who can read, that the "religion of peace" is a threat to all of us who value freedom and democracy. It's clear to anyone who can see, that the "religion of peace" is a threat to all of us who want to live in a society where we have freedom of - and from - religion.
What do we do? How can we respond? What is our best course of action?